‘Samsung captures 95% of Android profits’

“According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits.” Wow.

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This isn’t surprising at all. International distribution, Aggressive marketing and carrier subsidies combined with features most people actually want (expandable storage and replaceable battery) would easily net them a large section of the market. Their horrible UI and pathetic handling of updates are something only power users care about. Most people don’t even know what os their phone is running, and the UI is something they just put up with.

Hey Google, you listening? Hint hint: expandable storage, replaceable battery. It won’t put them as high as Samsung as Google seems uninterested in carrier subsidies or pandering to their bloatware (and good on them for that) but it’ll mean the power users turn to Google more often. As it stands now, while stock Android is what I want, I’m not buying any Google devices until at the very least they put the MicroSD slot back (the battery is annoying but I can live with it). Their internal storage options are shameful however and, if they’re not going to offer high capacity options, they need to do something for the rest of us if they want our money. Distributing to more localities wouldn’t hurt either.

The Nexus S4 – a vanilla Android version of the Galaxy S4 announced a couple of days ago at Google I/O – is quite definitely a Nexus. Assuming it’s identical hardware to the Galaxy S4, it’ll have expandable storage.

Don’t speak for everyone. Personally I prefer thin over replaceable battery. I never experienced any need in battery replacement.

Let me guess, you’ve got an iPhone?

I’m just teasing of course (I’m an iPhone user myself at the moment as it has the apps I need and does get good battery life) but if so, I can see why you might say that. The iPhones (and iOS in general) at the moment seriously kick Android’s ass in the power management department. My iPhone easily lasts two days on a charge provided I don’t use it constantly. The Android phones I’ve used couldn’t even run a full day without recharging, and that’s without me using much multitasking and that’s just phones. Don’t even get me started on the battery life gap between the Nexus tablets and their iPad equivalents. If I could pick one Android feature, just one, for Google to really get right it would be power management.

Of course I’ve yet to find any current mobile os that manages power even half as well as old Symbian did.

I realize they don’t have expandable storage, which is why I didn’t bring it up as a point of contention. The OP was complaining to Google about both though, and I really don’t see where he’s getting the battery complaint from.

Yeah, I was going after those specifically because I was referring to why Samsung is mopping the floor with Google. I’m just as happy to dig at the others for the same reasons, but latest Nexus devices were my primary target. That may change with the Galaxy S4 Google edition though, as it sounds like that one may just have everything I’m after.

There are engineering samples of 128GB cards out there. Though they are stupidly priced.

Engineering samples? 128GB cards have been out for a while, and from a wide range of makers. You can even get them for as cheap as about $.65/GB. That’s not remotely close to what I would call “stupidly priced”.

The Nexus One, as far as I’m concerned, no longer counts as official support was dropped as of ICS. I’d love to see them continue the Nexus One-like devices, as aside from officially supported updates they are exactly what I wanted in a phone. As for the Galaxy Nexus… well, that’s just proved my point for me as the Galaxy Nexus is a Samsung device. The dealbreaker on that one though is that it doesn’t have expandable storage, though other Samsung devices do. I’m looking forward to the S4 Google edition, though price might be a factor there.

I’d say you got it backwards. Most people don’t care about replaceable batteries or expandable storage, those seem to be concerns of more advanced users. The de facto look of the user experience, may be more of an issue to the general public… who probably does not know, or care, what a CF card or what milliAmp hour are.

I think perhaps, samsung’s success has come from having managed to cater to either camp somewhat better than other vendors. Personally, I find their build quality atrocious. But that is a matter of personal taste…

I assume most of the profits are in the phone business, but it’s easy to see why Samsung would dominate the tablet and media player markets too. When comparison shopping (tablet, media player) I found other brands were overpriced and/or under-featured compared to Samsung.

Not even a chance I would have selected the Google product. And certainly not the competing Apple products either.

At this time I’d say it seems like samsung is doing everything right with respect to giving customers what they want. The people I know with samsung phones seem to like them and that’s a fair number of people.

More generally, all that Samsung does tends to be at last decent, often quite good. Oh yeah, and Samsung does virtually everything (so people are exposed often to its name, across different categories of products)